


Bloodbatter

by Sinderlin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Disease, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:49:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinderlin/pseuds/Sinderlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A blood-borne disease shows up and slowly eats its way through the majority of the remaining trolls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodbatter

Cold white light lit his face in a sickly halo, glowing eerily in the dark lab. His eyes ached and itched, making him blink and furiously rub at his eyes. His back hurt from the way he hunched in his chair, and his head throbbed in ways he couldn't describe. He could feel his bones creaking mournfully when he moved; they hurt too, in a dull achy way. He'd gradually been feeling worse and worse from the moment they finished the game. He figured he was just tired, sleep deprived, although sleep wasn't an option. Nobody seemed too concerned, just occasionally pushing him to go sleep. Terezi tripped him in front of the horn pile so that he'd land face-first in them, cackling out that he needed a rest. He crawled out of the pile when she wandered off, out of breath and stiff for no reason.

When things went to hell, his tired brain gave up entirely, leaving him half-formed thoughts and halfassed insults to sort through and fling haphazardly. The deaths strained his nerves to tight violin strings, bloody messes and fucked-up twists of fate grating the strings of his nerves down to spidery wires. He'd lived his life tense and angry, so it made sense that soon enough he might turn into a nervous wreck. He turned to Sollux and Terezi for a sort of comfort, becoming more tired and stiff as hours passed. His muscles twitched and seized every now and again, which he attributed to his sleep deprivation and low amount of movement. His dazed brain mulled over whether or not all this could just be sleep depravation and maybe dehydration, but the stilted bouts of stomach cramps wiped out his half-thoughts and attempted quandaries.

When Sollux finished setting the meteor in motion, they all sat back and prepared to muscle through the long haul. Except for one of them. Karkat was sitting in the dust, pale-faced and sweating, jaw hanging limply open. Terezi rubbed his back, too worried to laugh or drub or mock. Sollux couldn't see the big beads of sweat rolling down his clammy face, but he sat beside him and told him he would be alright just the same. Kanaya seemed more distant, brows knit and mouth drawn into a thin line, staring at the trio through the timeless day-night they were gliding through. Aradia hovered, curious, worried expressions flitting across her face. Gamzee was a thin pole on the horizon, staring into space as oblivious as he once was not so long ago. 

Sollux sat, as uncomfortable as it was, inadvertantly being used as a sweat-rag by Karkat. Terezi wiped at his forehead and forced bottles of faygo on him when she could. Aradia forced timeloops that barely held together to make sure enough food and liquids were available, even though she started looking harried and as tired as when Karkat had first began suffering from whatever it was that was making him shake and wheeze like an ancient tree in a hurricane. Kanaya seemed to have grown cold, standing in the distance and watching with a crease perpetually between her brows. Her eyes never seemed to close as she glowed against the dark backdrop. Terezi felt almost angry that she stood so far away and still had the nerve to watch Karkat suffer, but she merely bit her lip and wiped sweat-soaked hair away from his eyes.

"KK, you stopped eating, then you stopped talking. You need to at least drink something," Sollux muttered, pushing another beverage at him as he lay across Terezi's lap. He coughed and shivered in response, curling in on himself when Terezi put a hand on his side. His bleary eyes blinked disconnectedly, unfocused and staring. They sadly sighed and let him ball up in her lap, silent and shaking. She made certain he had fallen into sleep, fitful as it was, before gently rolling him off her legs and into Aradia's arms. She and Sollux nodded at her solemnly and wiped at the sweat still pouring from their friend's feeble body.

"What's wrong with you? You're avoiding him like the plague!" Terezi accused as she approached the glowing figure of Kanaya. In response, the vampire lowered her face in what seemed like shame. She rubbed at her temple and looked worriedly at the shivering shape in the distance again. "If you're worried about him, come help us! Hey- Are you even listening?" She hissed, reaching for Kanaya's arm.

She yanked her arm away, snapping, "Please refrain from touching me." Terezi raised her eyebrows, then glared, as if to say 'what gives you the right to say that?'. Kanaya continued to stare over Terezi's shoulder, lips drawn tight over her fangs. She seemed to screw up her face in disgust or fear before she answered. "He has some sort of blood-borne disease. I can smell it all over him even from here," She whispered, folding her arms defensively across her breast. Terezi gaped at her, teeth glinting with her reflected ethereal glow.

"Then you should be trying to help him even more, not looking at him like a rotten hunk of meat!" She spat, quickly swiping at the slender girl with her cane before she could react and stomping back to her flush's side. Kanaya clutched at the side of her head and stared, lips parted in shock. She sat in the dirt and glared at her shimmering feet. She could still smell the sour, oozing decay of whatever was swimming through the blood of their friend. It was going to get so much worse before it got better, if it got better at all. She'd spent hours upon hours wondering what would happen if it spread, what it was, if their friend had been infected right from the start or if someone did this to him, if they really were all going to die. She hated herself for it, but the best thing she could do was stay as far as possible from the source of that evil smell.

"Karkles, I'm so sorry, I don't know what to do...I wish I did," Terezi mumbled as she sat back down next to him, rubbing his side comfortingly. He coughed weakly and raised his eyes to hers. She heard a faint rasp from below her, and leaned down to listen more closely.

"I'm going to die...I knew it..." He wheezed, lips cracked and eyes tinted with red. She smiled, shook her head, and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled a tear rolling down his cheek, sweet and cherry red, and wiped at it with her thumb. His hand found its way into hers and clutched as tight as it could, weak and sweaty as it was.

"You need to drink something," She mumbled, opening her sylladex for another faygo. Karkat blankly accepted, swallowing it haltingly as she held the bottle to his lips. When he stopped swallowing it, she put the bottle away and nodded thankfully at Aradia. Aradia nodded back and slipped him back onto her lap, standing up to stretch. It seemed like he was keeping it down for the moment, she noted with relief. She put her hand on his forehead and quickly pulled away, eyebrows raised. "He's burning up," She whispered, and Sollux tried to feel too. He hissed at the heat and nodded. "Help me get his shirt off, it's soaked anyways," She ordered, sitting Karkat up against her and lifting his arms slightly. Sollux helped gently peel the shirt away from feverish skin, tossing it into his sylladex. Who knows, maybe one day they'd run across a washing machine.

Suddenly, Karkat lurched forward, batting away the arm that shot out to catch him with surprising strength. He landed on his elbows and heaved heavily, stomach clenching too tight and his throat seizing as his stomach contents emptied onto the ground. Terezi and Sollux gasped, trying to help him up and stop him from falling into the mess. He let them grab hold of him this time, red-tinged drool clinging to his lips as he coughed and twitched pathetically. As they set him on clean ground, he heaved again, nothing but bile coming back up. They stared and helped him away from the second pool, faces painted with worry and fear. Terezi glanced at where Kanaya had been. Kanaya stared back wordlessly.

He seemed to get a little better in the following days, nights, or whatever, keeping fluids and the occasional snack food down. He still shook like a leaf and hacked so hard Terezi was afraid she'd smell chunks of lung sometimes, but it was at least some improvement. Kanaya backed away whenever Terezi tried to get her to finally pitch in, though. They really needed the help; they were all getting tired from taking care of Karkat and trying to keep themselves from going crazy. Sollux complained occasionally that he was sore all over, not just in his joints from squatting by his friend like before. Aradia agreed, saying the timeloops were taking a lot out of her. Karkat would try to be a grumpy ass like he used to be when they started complaining, but always ended up just raspily thanking them and then falling asleep.

A distant pinpoint of light shined in front of the meteor like the north star, now. They let their hopes rise a little, thinking that maybe it was their new friends, and maybe they had extra supplies that could help. Never mind the ETA of three years, maybe, just maybe they could get help early. Karkat was actually talking again, sweating less, and swatting grumpily at Sollux when he made terrible jokes. Terezi started to tease him again, wrapping him up in tight hugs just to make him flail and whine at her.

"I missed your pissy little voice, Karkles~," She hummed, squeezing him tight against her. Sollux laughed and warned her not to break him. Karkat screamed at them both to fuck off and attempted to punch Sollux, but didn't have enough room to move and reach him. Terezi cackled and nuzzled him affectionately, only giggling when he muttered that he hated all of them and flushed red. Aradia laughed at him and tossed a faygo bottle, which landed in his lap with surprising grace. He drank it in a way they assumed was grateful and succumbed to the vicious cuddles Terezi was dishing out and allowed her to handle him like a teddy bear.

"Get a room, you two," Sollux laughed, making a gagging motion. Terezi playfully commented that maybe she'd prefer not to have one, which sent Karkat into another flail-fest of gibbering angry nonsense with the reddest face they had ever seen. He got so worked up he didn't even notice that his nose was bleeding. Terezi huffed and told him to wipe it, even if the extra-rich cherry syrup smell was enticing. Karkat growled and wiped it on his arm, not having a shirt to take the damage for him. Kanaya looked on with wide, worried eyes in the distance, overwhelmed by the smell of rotting blood from where she stood, even if no-one else seemed to notice a thing.

Karkat was still on the road to recovery even through the unnoticed days, while his three caretakers were getting more tired by the hour. Terezi had developed a slight case of narcolepsy and general malaise. Sollux and Aradia were still sore through-and-through, though Sollux had begun coughing and sniffling regularly and Aradia had grown too tired and nausiated to even think about time loops. Gamzee was nowhere to be found, but in her efforts to move further and further away from the source of the invisible rot that she believed to be festering amongst her friends, she came across his trophies and prizes, along with the occasional splotch of grapey indigo. The splotches smelled less like swamp muck and more like some kind of sugary syrup, so she shrugged it off.

The meteor was a surprisingly large place with even more surprisingly few places to take refuge in. Far from the lab, she found an outpost for isolated experiments. It seemed like an acceptable choice, so she made herself at home among the tubes and soundproofed rooms. Once in a long while she would return to check up on the progression of her friends' symptoms. She was quickly too naustiated by the smell to even go close enough to spot them. She grimaced and made a mental note to warn their incoming friends of the danger zone. There were no computers, so she found that all she had left to do was sleep. The idea was welcoming.

She woke to the overwhelming stench of rot and decay and started out of her chair, whipping out her chainsaw and facing the source of the stench. It was Gamzee, with his favorite trophy in tow. She relaxed slightly, figuring that it was the head that was the source of the smell, and she wouldn't have to worry so much about getting blood on her should she have to. He seemed confused as to why she reacted so violently and popped out some story about going for a walk with his best bro. Kanaya tried not to roll her eyes, she really did. She shooed him out, glaring at the puddled streaks of indigo on the floor muddled with reeking brown. She resolved to do some cleaning with one of her already ruined dresses, pinching her nose at the smell.

She had forced herself back, well within the danger zone, to check up on some of the last surviving members of her species, and more importantly, friends. She waved half-heartedly at Aradia, who was slumped over a motionless pair lying together on the ground. She shook them awake and pointed Kanaya out to them. Karkat had dried blood crusted on his upper lip from multiple nosebleeds, and his teeth seemed reddish even from where Kanaya was standing. She scowled. Terezi had fared about as well, teal-touched lips scowling back at her. Sollux was nowhere to be seen. She risked asking, and much to her chagrin, recieved an unexpectedly vague and callous answer. It seems he'd gotten fed up and wandered off somewhere, leaving Aradia on nurse duty when she was looking possibly worse than Karkat or Terezi.

After advising Aradia to get some rest of her own, she turned her back on them again and quietly sauntered to the safety of her ruins. The whole meteor was dead silent, and unsettlingly still. It was almost like daytime in the desert, minus the walking dead, she remarked. She paused a while by a dusty rock and wondered why the humans hadn't made any contact since they began their journey to meet each other. Maybe the same thing eating her friends from the inside out took them, too. Briefly, she pondered why Gamzee was in such health when he was messing about with corpses all the time. Perhaps it was a highblood thing.

Her shoes left imprints in the thin dust layer covering the rock, trailing back to her makeshift hive in lazy curves. She sighed inwardly, brushing hair from her face and staring into the empty space above her. There were no stars out there, just darkness and horrorterrors. She almost hoped one or the other would grab them for a change of pace. She lingered outside the door to her safehouse, smelling faint rotted blood and sourness. No place was clean. No place was home. She pressed the door in and tapped the dust off her shoes before entering.

Sollux was sitting in her chair, staring blankly, when she looked up. The horrible, thick, oozing stench of filth and disease hit her like a wall. The airtight door had stopped the smells from warning her off, and now she was visiting friends again. He quirked his lips up and weakly spat out blood, limply beckoning her. She frowned.

"I know it was too late before you even noticed," he muttered, "but that was cold. Leaving us to rot like that. Because that's what we did. Look at me, gC."

She realized she had closed her eyes. She opened them slowly, as if it would make him any less bloodied and frail. Trails of yellow led from his eyes down his cheeks and chin, bringing out the bruised color of his skin. He smiled with parted lips, revealing yellow stains and fresh trails. His nose and hands were smudged with yellow, too, and he slyly turned his head to showcase the long line of yellow from his ear down his neck. She stared nausiously. 

"You didn't even try to help...You even came to watch us dying," he accused, leaning forward in the chair. His forearms looked thinner than ever, and his clothes looked loose. She shook her head and gagged. He opened his mouth to speak and doubled over, retching a watery mix of blood and bile onto the floor. She opened the door behind her and slid back out, grimacing. He hissed a last insult at her. "You're already dead, do you really have to worry?"

"Can I have it?"

She yelped, then turned around and dusted herself off melodramatically. Her eyes burned a bit. She hoped it was just depression and the smell. She sneered at Gamzee.

"No, you may not have HIM. He's still alive, if desecrating corpses wasn't odd and off-putting enough," she snapped, glaring harshly. He laughed and waved it off.

"Alright, I got it, I got it. I'll wait," He mumbled, half incoherent and half overly clear. Anger boiled up at the familiar gravelly rumble of the last remark, but she merely shot him another glare and turned to the door. This was getting ridiculous. She pushed the door open again and was greeted by the same eye-watching stench as before. Sollux glared at her, hunched and frail in the chair.

"How would I go about helping?" she asked, lips pursed and trying her best not to retch. Sollux scowled, yellowed teeth pulling his lips thin. It appeared that he didn't actually know, and might have just come to berate her for abandoning the rest of them to their fate. "I see. So you wish me death for not wanting to die again?" She drew her shoulders higher, frowning.

"No, I-..." Sollux sighed, wiping his mouth on his arm,"You avoided us like the plague-," he coughed,"-which is kind of fair, but still. Friends should wait until friends die before they leave their bodies to rot." He raised an eyebrow challengingly and spat another splotch of blood onto the floor. Her stomach churned at the sour reek leaking from him and she took a step back. "If I still had my powers, I bet I'd hear us all choking on our guts." He snarled and coughed up another splattering of yellow. "Do dead people get sick?" He rubbed at his neck and leaned back in the chair. He shot her a look that said 'get lost' and turned his face away.

"Leave him in peace," she hissed at Gamzee as she backed further out. He shrugged and smiled nonchalantly at her. She groaned and made her way back to the little camp the other three had set up, impromptu and messy. She wandered through the hazy bloodrot air and followed the strongest currents back to the trio. She paused when Terezi lifted her head and snarled at her. The tealblood had the appearance of a scared, ill animal watching over the body of its comrade as if that could save them from their fates. Kanaya strode closer anyhow, waving as she approached. Her lips curled down into a heavy frown when Terezi shifted;she had been hiding the large dried pool of vibrant red blood under and behind her.

"What happened?" Kanaya asked dumbly, brows pinching together in momentary confusion. Karkat was curled on his side, face covered in smears of blood. His nose and lips were caked with it, and thick red lines ran over his chin and cheeks. There was blood everywhere;hardly a dot of grey lefft on his face. His nose, brow, and chin were also dusted with dirt. He probably vomited out too much blood and fell over. His pants were mostly red as well, and oddly creased. One of Terezi's legs was red, as was her back. Aradia was the same as Sollux had been, but lying quietly on the ground with her hands folded on her chest.

"What do you think? He was sick!" Terezi snapped, flecks of blood flying from her lips in anger.

"It boiled his thinkpan, but he likely died of blood loss or organ failure," Aradia commented calmly with wet maroon lips.

"Oh," Kanaya replied, unsure how to respond. She briefly wondered what the humans would think upon arrival, if they were still alive. "I'm sorry." She rubbed her arm uncomfortably, contemplating the pros and cons of going and staying. It wasn't as though she could offer them any comfort, and she felt as though she was just making Terezi angrier, even if that anger derived from fear. She turned on her heel and brusquely strode away, leaving the two to themselves.

She paused as she was passing her no longer safe safehouse and decided to see if Sollux was still alive. She pressed the door open quietly and peeked in. It was still, cool, and rank. However, despite the darkness of the unlit room, she could tell something was wrong with his silhouette. It was missing a head! She groaned and set out again, eyes strained for a trail of yellow drips.


End file.
